Why Complaining Lowers Your Positive Outlook and How to Combat It

On the surface, complaining seems like it’s not so bad. We all need a moment to get out the stuff that’s really bothering us. If you’ve ever worked in the service industry, you know how rampant complaining about customers is but it happens in all lines of work. No matter where you go, you or someone you know complains excessively. This is actually bad for your health. Like, literally bad for your health. But all is not lost! We at Psychology Hacker are going to break down just for you (because you’re so special) how complaining is bad for your health and what to do about it.

1. NEGATIVE PEOPLE CREATE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

There’s that saying of ‘misery loves company’ and there’s some truth to that. When someone in your social circle is broadcasting their misery out into the world, everyone around them picks up on it. Hang around them long enough, and you’ll start becoming just as miserable as they are. When we have negative thoughts, we’re actually creating easy pathways for our brain to use. These pathways result in us being more negative about….well, anything. Because we’re human and all inherently empathic, “our brain ‘tries out’ that same emotion” that we see someone else experiencing, says Steve Parton of Psych Pedia. This is essentially empathy. Our brain witnesses an emotion and thinks, “Hey, I want to understand what that person is going through” so it imagines that it’s feeling that emotion. Doing so creates those neuro-pathways mentioned earlier, thus making it easier for you to be a negative person in general. The lesson hear is that you need to start surrounding yourself with more positive people to make you a more positive person. Try not to cut the negative ones out of your life altogether but start limiting your interactions with them until they change their tune.

2. BRIDGES IN YOUR BRAIN

Briefly touched on in reason number one, your brain is constantly making new ‘bridges’ for electrical charges to move over. Parton goes on to explain it like this, “Throughout your brain there is a collection of synapses separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. Whenever you have a thought, one synapse shoots a chemical across the cleft to another synapse, thus building a bridge over which an electric signal can cross, carrying along its charge the relevant information you’re thinking about. Here’s the kicker. Every time this electrical charge is triggered, the synapses grow closer together in order to decrease the distance the electrical charge has to cross…. The brain is rewiring its own circuitry, physically changing itself, to make it easier and more likely that the proper synapses will share the chemical link and thus spark together–in essence, making it easier for the thought to trigger.”

In simple terms, this means that whenever you have a negative thought, it gets easier and easier for your brain to revisit that negative thought. You can see why this is a bad thing. Thankfully, you can use this biological wiring to influence you’re positive thoughts. The more positive your thinking, the easier it is for you to have positive thoughts. Not only that, when it’s easier for your brain to start having positive thoughts, it will start influencing how you feel. Negative thoughts influence you to be a more negative person. Positive thoughts make you more positive. So just make sure that you’re trying to limit the amount of negative thoughts that you have.

3. COMPLAINING TRIGGERS STRESS

A lot of people aren’t actually aware that stress can actually kill you. It’s a slow and steady process but eventually, stress will gun you down. When people complain about something, they generally do it because they want to vent and relieve their stress. Irony! Complaining actually increases your stress because you’re firing off on those negative pathways you’ve created in your brain. The reason stress occurs is because of a chemical in your brain called cortisol. Now, cortisol is necessary for you to live but it’s also the reason that you get stressed and complaining releases heightened levels of cortisol. Heightened levels of cortisol “interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, [and] heart disease”, just to name a few.

The way to combat this is to JUST STOP COMPLAINING. That might seem like a tall order but instead of complaining, just think about what you can do to actually solve the problem you would otherwise complain about. When you’re thinking about solutions to your complaints, you’re creating bridges for your brain to access faster. This will help you turn yourself into a problem solver, and a positive one to boot.

If you’d like to learn more on how to keep that positivity going in your life, then Click on this Link to get your FREE Positivity Masterclass courtesy of Psychology Hacker’s CEO, Adam Lyons. On that page, Adam breaks down exactly what you can do to increase your positive outlook each and every day. Not only that, he also makes his other six masterclasses available to you COMPLETELY FREE. These masterclasses are designed to help you achieve the success you’ve always deserved in life. So, don’t miss out and Get your Free Psychology Hacker Masterclasses today.